EP251: Unexpected Outcomes

[mbrennan]

I did start to guess before he got to Dawson that the real experiment was probably what people did after being told they were simulations -- but in a well-told tale, I don't mind guessing where it's going, and this was indeed a well-told tale.

I'll admit the 9/11 opening made me twitch at first.  Inglourious Basterds got me thinking about how we're nearly always ready to see alternate histories that make things worse, but there's odd limitations (partly time-based) on whether we're ready to see history made alternate in a fashion that averts horror.  9/11 is definitely too recent for me to enjoy a story in which the tragedies are somehow prevented; it feels like cheap wish-fulfillment.  But my twitchiness went away as soon as the simulation was explained, because it didn't erase the real event.

Technical complaint: I don't know if it's a mike issue or what, but the exhale/inhale break between lines was VERY audible, and distracted me more and more as the reading went along.  It got to the point where I was gritting my teeth through that in order to pay attention to (and enjoy) the story.  Otherwise the reading was decent; it's just the noise that was driving me crazy.

[ElectricPaladin]

It didn't even occur to me to think about this until others mentioned it, but I want to come out and say that the 9/11 mention didn't bug me in the least. I happened. It was a big deal. It's an even that's going to cast its shadow on everything we do and everything we write, probably for the rest of our lives ("us" being everyone in America who lived through it). I don't see anything wrong with bringing it up, using it in stories, and mining it for plot potential. I never have, even immediately afterwards, and I certainly don't now, almost a decade later. Honestly, the parallel seemed pretty apt to me: that was a moment that changed everything for us... and in the simulation, it was a moment that changed everything for them.

[Boggled Coriander]

Not really a story comment, but I have to say this episode was Norm's best EP intro/outro yet.

[Scattercat]

Personally, I was a little underwhelmed.  I had a hard time buying that the narrator and his buddy were the only people who were doing this, and I had a REALLY hard time believing that they'd managed to do anything other than exactly what was expected of them; that got a token mention right at the end of his would-be "Common Sense" pamphlet, but frankly, it's a much larger problem than that.  I can't imagine that the future-folks thought that NO ONE in an entire simulated planet would figure out what was going on, especially since the Professor's initial explanation was really thin to start out with.

I was annoyed by the winking self-inserts, but I do have a pet peeve about authors writing main characters who are authors; it happens a LOT, and it's just kind of lazy.  I know that this one was done in a self-aware way, but that doesn't wholly ameliorate the initial eye-rolling reaction. 

I was more irked that the story seemed to be a lot more interested in telling me about its premise than in actually exploring the premise.  I'd have liked to see the world rather than listen to a brief and distant summary-travelogue sandwiched between two monologues.  There's a lot of potential meat here (witness the 4000-page "Otherland" series by Tad Williams, which addresses similar concepts) and it seemed to be almost purposely ignored in favor of simple (almost simplistic) explanations and a rather confusing and myopic call to arms.

I love Tim Pratt to pieces, most of the time, but this was just a flop for me on several levels.  I feel like some story notes got given a quick skeletal plotline and shoved out the door before they could develop fully; a bit like reading Roger Zelazny's "The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current" and then the novella it eventually grew into, "Home is the Hangman."  I think this concept needed to stew a bit longer and come back as a meatier tale.

[Anarkey]

Personally, I was a little underwhelmed.  I had a hard time buying that the narrator and his buddy were the only people who were doing this, .

Your other comments are fair enough, and I agree with some of them, but this one strikes as an impression not verified by the text.  If the world is, in fact, as fractured as described, then whether other people were doing this or not is not a known quantity to the author.  I took away the impression that probably other people ARE doing it, we just don't know about them, because we don't have their pamphlet. 

No, where it broke down for me (though I enjoyed it, on the whole) is in the utter, unexamined Amerocentricity.  Because there's only a language barrier when the scientist talks to the hijackers, that barrier is unacknowledged when the characters are shortcutting to Kathmandu (or wherever).  Handing them your English pamphlet, are you?  And they're doing what with that, exactly?

[Kaa]

[W]here it broke down for me (though I enjoyed it, on the whole) is in the utter, unexamined Amerocentricity.

You mean kind of like it is in our real world?

[Talia]

There are languages other than American??!!?

[Scattercat]

Personally, I was a little underwhelmed.  I had a hard time buying that the narrator and his buddy were the only people who were doing this, .

Your other comments are fair enough, and I agree with some of them, but this one strikes as an impression not verified by the text. 

Yeah, I know, but it doesn't even get *mentioned* elsewhere in the story that maybe someone else dug a hole.  This may just be another artifact of the "too much world crammed into too little plot" problem.  It feels almost perverse how much was ignored in favor of reading this pamphlet all the way through, particularly when the pamphlet itself isn't particularly insightful about the situation the story proposes.

[Talia]

I don't think it's necesary for it to be mentioned. Maybe it happened, yeah, but the story is being told through one person's point of view, so its reasonable only his part of the story be told.

[timpratt]

The language barrier issue is a fair cop, and something I could have addressed pretty easily if I'd thought about it. (Though Dawson does speak a little Chinese! In real life, that is...)

Nobody has contacted me with any bad reactions to the 9/11 aspect, though several reviewers have hypothesized that people might react badly to it. I wasn't trying to trivialize the event at all. The story was inspired by the fact that my then girlfriend, now wife and I really did stay in bed that morning after our friend Sherman called, wondering what kind of event could possibly be on every channel at once, hypothesizing that it could be an assassination or an alien invasion... reality was so much worse.

For people who don't like the metafictional aspect... well, yeah, some people don't. And I considered fictionalizing it. But I felt it could have more impact if I grounded it more in my personal reality. Certainly it made it more emotionally powerful for me, while writing it. (And technically it's not exactly metafiction -- I mean, the narrator isn't *me*, he's a simulation of me running in the unimaginably distant future...)

[Heradel]

* No, I didn't write that line just so Bill reads it in the feedback segment. I swear.

I will be reading just this bit in the feedback segment.

[DKT]

FWIW, the 9/11 scene early in the story put me in mind of Brian K. Vaughan's comic book Ex Machina, about the world's first and worst superhero, who comes out of retirement long enough to keep the second plane from hitting the second tower, thereby saving it and making himself a national hero and candidate for mayor of NYC. It's mostly a very good.

That's not at all to take away from what Tim did here - they're different stories that go in very different directions. But it's just to say that there are many stories trying to deal with 9/11 and it's effect on American culture (Fringe in television; Gibson's Pattern Recognition also comes to mind, albeit not at all an alternative history way.

Personally, I appreciate that, although I totally get why others may not.

[Wilson Fowlie]

The language barrier issue is a fair cop, and something I could have addressed pretty easily if I'd thought about it.

But what about the pregnant women??  Inquiring minds want to know!

[mmarques]

I loved the whole experimental situation and the references to the Zimbardo and Milgram experiments.

I'm Milgram's daughter, and this story reminded me how when he died, sometimes those of us who knew him well would say that maybe that he wasn't really dead - that it was just another Milgram experiment so that our reactions could be observed. I"m sure if he were alive, I'd be sharing this story with him and discussing it with him.

[timpratt]

Pregnant women: probably pregnant forever, because as horrible as that is, the alternatives are even more disturbing.

[ElectricPaladin]

Pregnant women: probably pregnant forever, because as horrible as that is, the alternatives are even more disturbing.

Except, at that point they're probably basically carrying stillborn babies. And, we know that most body functions - including healing - must continue. A dude digging a hole would notice if his cuts and blisters never cleared up (and now we're wandering into Elantris... *shudder*). So, probably a doctor could just cut the baby out or induce labor.

[Dem]

Speaking as an avatar with a home in 'Pondorosa', Second Life, and clothing that isn't always where it should be when I make my entrance, I don't see what all the fuss is about. You get switched off, you migrate to another SIM. Simples!

[Loz]

Hmmm, so if we can be sure that the mysterious overlords plan wasn't to simulate the events up to 11/09/01 (yah boo sucks to your American way of writing dates!) what was it, to see what happens to humans when faced by the removal of things that make the human experience human? The choices highlighted seem a bit random and a good scientist would surely work on the principle of ramping up the unfavourable factors ('... then Doctor God reappeared again and said that they had to turn the weather off this time because the processing required...')? This isn't a complaint by the way, I really enjoyed the story.

I'm not sure how it follows that the white space is outside the game and therefore all rules are off in it's use, the video game analogy isn't exact, when running along the ceiling in Mario, you're still in the world. I like to think that the overlords are letting quite a few humans find this space as part of whatever their scheme really is.

And to whoever it was that said they didn't like it when authors turn up in their own work, have you read 'VALIS'?

[stePH]

And to whoever it was that said they didn't like it when authors turn up in their own work, have you read 'VALIS'?

As I understand it, PKD really believed he was in contact with a Vast Active Living Intelligence System, and that novel was largely autobiographical (I'm sure he fabricated the bits about rock star Mother Goose, the VALIS movie, and the messiah kid Sophia -- but I'm not sure about his split-personality "Horselover Fat". Being mentally fucked up was an issue all his life.)

[jjtraw]

what was it, to see what happens to humans when faced by the removal of things that make the human experience human? The choices highlighted seem a bit random and a good scientist would surely work on the principle of ramping up the unfavourable factors

They're running *lots* of different simulations, and each one just changes one little factor...

This set of conditions is just the world *this particular* Tim Pratt is in...

[captain0terror]

+Good Story
++Great narration
+Good sound quality
++Great Intro/outro by Norm Sherman*

I liked the story very much, but i'd have liked a more substantive ending. i'm new to short-story science fiction, but i love everything of Tim Pratt that i've heard so far...

*Norm Sherman is always an interesting/funny/fun intro; i want some of whatever he is taking..

/= )

[Number_6]

Yes please, more of this. "Mellow apocalypse". Heh.

[Unblinking]

An interesting premise, I liked the idea of the simulation of the real world with non-essential services shut down.  It did bother me at the beginning how nonsensical the way they did this was--after all, if weather is hard to simulate, then microbes would be even more so, as well as aging.  So I was happy when the story pointed this out and used it for justification of the experimenters lying.

This will come as a surprise, since I usually gush about Tim Pratt's stories at the slightest provocation, but overall I really hated this story.  I'd easily peg him as my favorite short story author of all time because he comes up with such cool ideas which strike a chord in me with a consistency that no other author has managed.

The reasons this one really bugged me.
1.  The 9/11 beginning.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that those people were saved in this universe.  But using this sort of (fairly) recent tragedy as the basis of a short story tends to rub me the wrong way--like selling hot dogs by one of those signs that are often put up near fatal drunk driving accidents.  I wouldn't say I was "outraged" by this, more like "peeved".  I guess one advantage of it is that most everybody knows what they were doing at the time that the world would have frozen.  I was asleep in my dorm room in sophmore year of college in Rapid City, SD at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.

2.  Tim Pratt as the major character.  It really annoys me when a writer writes a story about themselves.  Of all the characters in the world that could provide the most compelling point of view, the author thinks only of the author?  The choice to write as self always strikes me as either arrogant or lazy, I'm not sure which.  Honestly, a few minutes into realizing that Tim was writing of Tim I was very tempted to just hit Next.  But I said to myself "Self, Tim Pratt has never let you down before.  Stick with the story and it'll turn out to be pretty good."

3.  The ending. 
I'm very curious what other people thought the ending was trying to say, and also what the authorial intent was.  I think I must've gotten a much different interpretation about it.  To me, it pretty much said straight out in Tim Pratt's own words "Yeah, I know this isn't a very good story, and I'm now famous enough that you listened to it all the way to the end.  I bet you feel pretty stupid now, don't you?"  This especially bugged me because I didn't think it was a very good story, and HAD considered turning it off in the middle, but had stuck with it because I wanted to give him a chance.

I hope someone else has an alternate interpretation--I'd like to learn that I'm totally off-base on what I thought the ending was saying.

[Talia]

Well, points 1 and 2 are purely matters of personal taste. Neither of them are issues for me personally but to each their own. But point three? I did not get that feeling at ALL. I strongly suspect your feelings on the ending were heavily influenced by the fact the story was already strongly not to your taste on two different points.

For one thing, you seem to be taking the story as if its actually Tim Pratt speaking and meaning those words. Its not Tim Pratt the real world Tim Pratt, its Tim Pratt the "fake" world Tim Pratt who's saying those things and is only speaking of his own experience. He's famous in his virtual world because of the revolutionary missives he's sending out. He's just wondering what happened to the "real" version of him. Also, after typing that paragraph out my head now hurts. Well, I guess that's the main thing really - the narrator isn't the real Tim Pratt, he's the fictional Tim Pratt.

I personally dig the meta stuff and enjoyed how it was used in this story.

[Unblinking]

But point three? I did not get that feeling at ALL. I strongly suspect your feelings on the ending were heavily influenced by the fact the story was already strongly not to your taste on two different points.

I don't think that I interpreted the ending that way only because I disliked the story.  If I recall correctly, the final paragraph paraphrased along the lines of "If I had continued uninterrupted in that other world, I wonder if I would have become a famous writer.  So famous that no one could resist my name appeal.  Well, you're reading this, aren't you?"

That final sentence addressed directly to the reader, for me, crossed the point of view between Tim.1 (the simulation) into Tim.0 (our own beloved real-life person), implying that I only made it all the way to the end of the story because Tim.0 has enough name recognition that ANYONE would read to the end because it's Tim-point-friggin-0 and everyone knows Tim.0 is infallible!  Maybe the shift between Tim.1 and Tim.0 at the end was not intended, and was completely a figment of my imagination.  That's entirely possible.

(As an aside:  an author writing himself into a story makes for an interesting conundrum when trying to follow the One Rule here.  How do I criticize the character of Tim.1 without implicitly criticizing Tim.0?  Well, I'm trying--hopefully I don't cross the fuzzy line in the sand.)

Well, I guess that's the main thing really - the narrator isn't the real Tim Pratt, he's the fictional Tim Pratt.

Hmmm... that's an interesting argument, which I'm not sure I totally agree with.  According to the premise of the story, at the moment of the plane hitting the tower, Tim.1 was identical to Tim.0 in every way.  It is only afterward that they diverge.  Since that's right in the premise, and I trust Tim's writing skill, I'm going to assume that's 100% accurate.  If that's the case, then any criticism of Tim.1 at the time of the event is totally a criticism of Tim.0.  This will be less true as time goes on, but I'm not sure it's clear how much time has actually passed (I may have missed that) so I'm assuming it's not terribly long after the event--yes, the catastrophic event can change people, but he reacts the same way that Tim.0 would react because the simulation is supposed to be so exact.  So if Tim.1 says something which bothers me, it's not quite so easy for me to just say Tim.0 does not equal Tim.1.

If they're really identical at the time of the branch, then what Tim.1 says is exactly what Tim.0 would say if the same circumstance were to happen to him.

If they're not really identical at the time of the branch, then that's a flaw in the writing--it undermines the whole premise of the story.  And who knows Tim better than Tim?  If Tim can't write Tim's POV accurately, I'd be very very surprised.